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Night Sky Sensory Bin for Building Language Skills

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The night sky is a source of wonder for people of all ages, but children especially. I completely love that for #PlayfulPreschool this week we are exploring the night sky! We explored the solar system with the older kids over the summer, but we took a different route today to make it more skill-appropriate for Shiloh. I loved the way that this night sky sensory bin turned out! The sparkles contrasting with the black rice were so fun to explore!

I had a blast putting this sensory bin together for my little one. I had originally planned to put together a DIY light table, but my budget said that this would be a better option. I also contemplated glow-in-the-dark star and solar system stickers, but as fate would have it, my craft store did not have them.

Then, I saw the glitter foam stars and inspiration struck. It was all sparkles and fun from there on out!

Here’s what I used to create the Night Sky Sensory Bin.

Glitter foam stars

Gold metallic pipe cleaners

Gold pony beads

Star rhinestones

Gold tiny bead

Gold bead garland from the dollar section

Black dyed rice

Black glitter foam sheets

My goal for the sensory bin was to introduce some new words to Shiloh. I did not expect her to say the words independently, but I wanted to expose her to the words in a limited environment.

Counting

We counted the tiny rhinestone stars as we put them into a cupcake liner.

We also lined up the foam stars in the bin and counted to three as we did.

Big & Small

We compared big stars and small stars with the sparkly foam sheets and the foam stars. We stuck the sticker to the foam sheet according to size and separated them with a metallic gold pipe cleaner.

Long & short

We used the gold beaded garland to compare length. I cut the garland into several lengths and we compared the different pieces.

Fine-motor skills

Then we worked on fine motor skills by threading the gold pony beads onto the pipe cleaners. Shiloh is great with her fine motor skills. Especially picking up and manipulating small beads, but she lacks understanding that she needs to push the bead further down the pipe cleaner before adding a new one, so we worked on that skill.

We also had some fun making star cupcakes which was also great for building fine-motor skills. She worked hard at aiming the handfuls of rice into the cupcake liner. Then she decorated it with beads and garland.

To help extend the fun, I created a simple printable for practicing patterns. You can use the foam stars or the printable stars that are included. Then have fun creating your own patterns with the stars.